October 2007
links for 2007-10-31
Study says some Neanderthals may have been redheads - Yahoo! News This research suggests “Neanderthals [were] more like modern Europeans, with light skin and hair colour and language abilities, and yet there are no signs of interbreeding with modern humans,” Carles Lalueza-Fox, a molecular biologist at the University of (tags: neanderthals, redheads)
Google OpenSocial: The Open Common Services...
Techcrunch has announced that Google’s OpenSocial (formerly Maka Maka) will be launching this week:
[from Details Revealed: Google OpenSocial To Launch Thursday]
[…]
OpenSocial is a set of three common APIs, defined by Google with input from partners, that allow developers to access core functions and information at social networks:
Profile Information (user data)
Friends...
Busy, Busy, Busy
Several people have inquired about my blog silence. No health issues or nervous breakdown: just busy traveling and working.
Travel is not a vacation, and it is often the opposite of rest. - Paul Theroux
I have found it to be especially difficult to ponder the inner workings of the Web while generally disconnected from it. The EVDO data card I use in the States, that guarantees almost...
Predictions
The future is here. It’s just not evenly distributed yet.
The b5 Advisory Board
Jeremy Wright asked me to join the new b5 Advisory Board, which I think will be a lot of fun, with people like these: Renee Blodgett, Hugh Macleod, Doc Searls and Robert Scoble. And of course all the b5 folks, too, and Rick Segal.
Looking forward to CES, and not just for the gambling: it’s our first advisory board meeting.
Dymaxion cubicle
Dopplr Blog » Announcing the Dopplr 100, originally uploaded by Stowe Boyd.
I just realized that the Dopplr 100 announcement used Buckminster Fuller’s Dymaxion Earth map. Fuller is one of my heros. He invented a lot of cool stuff, particularly geodesic engineering (yes, the domes).
This map attempts to represent the earth as a large island chain, and ignores the...
Orwellian Link Police Will Get You
Marshall Kirkpatrick gets to the chewy chocolate center of the TV Links’ founder arrest for “illegal linking”:
[from TV Links Founder Arrested for Illegal Linking]
If Mr. Sharp will forgive me for linking to it, I will point out that the Internet Archive has preserved copies of the wretched TV Links site through the past 12 months. I want to emphasize that I’m only...
Nuetrality Is Cowardice
[from New Statesman - Neutrality is cowardice by Mark Lynas]
Future historians, assuming that there are any, will have an entertaining time looking back at how today’s journalists wriggled when confronted with the great moral question of our age. Faced with clear evidence of an existential threat to the survival of the planetary biosphere, news correspondents and media organisations...
Word Of The Moment: Indigeneous Content
Clay Shirky reports on a new term by Kio Stark to (please, please, please) fill the slot in the media’s so-called mind where “User Generated Content” is lodged:
Indigenous Content (which is to say “Created by the natives for themselves.”)
Clay says that Kio has the best tagset ever, but I couldn’t find indigenous content there…
Saul Klein on London As A Hot VC Scene
Saul Klein of Index Ventures was recently interviewed by paidContent:UK, and he makes the case that London is getting to be a very hot scene for VC:
[…]
I think that’s really changed the dynamic for London considerably because you can genuinely have big, big international businesses that can be started and grown out of London and Europe that can become significant global players....
links for 2007-10-21
Anil Dash: Blackbird, Rainman, Facebook and the Watery Web “Think of the web, of the Internet itself, as water. Proprietary platforms based on the web are ice cubes. They can, for a time, suspend themselves above the web at large. But over time, they only ever melt into the water.” (tags: facebook anil+dash blackbird rainman watery+web)
Unit Structures: The Directionality of...
Lighthouse
I have used and reviewed a long list of social media-based work management solutions, including Basecamp (see Basecamp and the Federation of Work), IBM Quickr (see In The Time Of “Me First”: IBM Slowr?), GoPlan (see GoPlan), and recently Huddle (see Todoist and Huddle: This Week’s Work Management Tools).
Now, I have bumped into another contender, a lightweight but extremely...
Nova Spivack on Web 3.0
Confirming that the ‘Web 3.0’ meme is inextricably linked to product hucksterism, Nova Spivack offers up his ‘best official definition’, explicitly reprising Jason Calacanis’ similarly heavyhanded official definition, that I explored here. Once again, a impresario is positing a shiny new web in which his patent nostrum is the quintessential centerpoint of a...
links for 2007-10-20
TripIt | Organize your travel Tripit announces TripIt To Me: mobile interface to the social travel app. (tags: tripit social+travel tripit+to+me)
Industries that Die “The superstructure mutates, and with that the outward facing media might change, but underneath it all, the foundations which make up all representational media are not so much different than they were 100 years...
Corante Has Lost Its Domain?
Whois Corante.com, originally uploaded by Stowe Boyd.
AndrewHires left a comment on my recent complaints about the blog spam taking over at Corante, where I used to write Get Real, saying that Corante.com has become an apartment hunting site.
Sure enough, if I visit Corante.com the place is a mess, although it looks like the old Corante with a bunch of broken RSS plumbing. But when I click...
Internet Evolution: What's the Web Worth?
My first real post at Internet Evolution is up:
[from What’s the Web Worth? by Stowe Boyd]
[…]
This is a world beset by disease, riven by war, melting under the sun, poisoned by hate and fear, pinioned by the tug-of-war between contending ideologies, tribes, nations, and religions. Maybe we should exchange the tiny and swindling sliver of what is good and bright in the world ...
links for 2007-10-19
Platial acquires Frappr Platial extends its offerings in geoloco by acquiring Frappr. Social mapping lives despite Google maps. (tags: geoloco platial frappr google)
e-mail of the species deadlier than the mail? | confused of calcutta JP Rangaswami calls (again) for the end of email. Email Delenda Est! (tags: email+delenda+est, email, jp+rangaswami)
Tel Aviv Geek Dinner: 27 October 2007
The Facebook event for the upcoming Tel Aviv Geek Dinner is open to anybody who’d like to come. Lot of cool folks coming already, and I will get to meet Liad Agmon, from Semingo, the company that has asked me to visit. (Semingo is involved in some very interesting — totally stealthy until now — work in social search, and I am sticking my nose into it. More to follow.)
...
Blogrovr and Feedcrier
Platial and Blogrovr, originally uploaded by Stowe Boyd.
I have recently given the Blogrover RSS plugin another try. Candidly, I did it because Blogrover’s product team included me in a bundle of tech blogs they recommend, and that has led to a big spike in RSS subscriptions.
But I have subscribed to a number of feeds through the plugin, and I am starting to enjoy the...
With Apologies To Henry David Thoreau
Beware of any undertaking that requires editing your Twitter stream.
Bubblicious?
Matt Stone and Matt Richtel turn their attention to the millions that Web start-ups are raising or receiving in acquisitions, and wonder if things are just a bit too bubblicious:
[from Silicon Valley Start-Ups Awash in Dollars, Again - New York Times]
Internet companies with funny names, little revenue and few customers are commanding high prices. And investors, having seemingly forgotten...
Marcien Jenckes Out At AOL
Valleywag reports that Marcien Jenckes, the VP and General Manager of AIM at AOL, is out in the newest round of cuts.
Observing AOL these days is like watching a drunk fall down the stairs.
I still maintain that they should unbundle AIM — the biggest asset they have, I think — and spin it out with a small team focused on doing that well. Sure, continue to have all sorts of media...
Tim O'Reilly on Techmeme
Tim O’Reilly has a great post, finding a synthesis between Facebook app uptake, the recent Quant meltdown, and Techmeme piling on behavior. It is only the latter that I will touch on here:
[from Facebook, the Quant Fund Meltdown, and the Techmeme Leaderboard]
[…]
When reviewing the Techmeme leaderboard, and then bouncing from there over to Techmeme itself, I was struck by the...
Tel Aviv Geek Dinner: 27 October 2007
The Facebook event for the upcoming Tel Aviv Geek Dinner is open to anybody who’d like to come. Lot of cool folks coming already, and I will get to meet Liad Agmon, from Semingo, the company that has asked me to visit. (Semingo is involved in some very interesting — totally stealthy until now — work in social search, and I am sticking my nose into it. More to follow.)
...
links for 2007-10-16
Eye on Winer I discovered today that soemone maintains a blog called “Eye On Winer” which tracks Dave Winers many controversies. Wild. (tags: dave+winer eyeonwiner.org)
Netscape Was Better As A Digg Clone: Viewers Duncan Riley reports that Netscape readership has dropped like a stone since they jettisoned Calacanis social news model, and went back to a — gulp —...
LitLiberation
Another good cause for Blog Action Day:
[from LitLiberation: Scalable Education Revolution]
What is LitLiberation?
30% of rural children in developing countries aren’t enrolled in school. Let that soak in. For $17,000 — split among 10 friends at $1,700 each, for example — you can build a school with your names on it, immortalize your friendship, and give education to tens of thousands of...
Pete Cashmore on Blog Reader Stats Are Bullshit
Pete just caught me up on a series of posts at Mashable that lay out a strong case for how fishy the RSS readers stas are that many have been glorying in the last few days.
I won’t summarize the investigative bloggerism involved, although I followed the arguments are they seem plausible.
The conclusions at one of the posts are telling:
[from Google Reader Stats Are Bullshit (With...
Blog Action Day: Save The Planet
I interrupt the usually unbroken stream of tech here to acknowledge Blog Action Day, and to present a few posts on the environment from my /Ambivalence blog, where I post about art, culture, and life:
Al Gore: Head Of The Gaia Government-In-Exile Jamais Cascio on Solving the Climate Crisis easyJet.com: Carbon Offset George Soros
I also want to offer Stanley Kubrick’s observation —...
Google Calendar Tasks: Coming, But In What Form?
The anonymous but authoritative Google Calendar Guide announced on 5 October in the Google Calendar group that GCal will soon have a to do/task list feature:
[from Petition for a ToDo List - Feature Requests and Miscellaneous | Google Groups]
Hey everyone - thanks for the loud and very clear feedback on your desire for a to-do/task list feature. We’re pretty passionate about to-do...
links for 2007-10-15
Facebook Has LinkedIn In Their Crosshairs Arrington discusses how Facebook is about make an endrun on Linkedin, based on the ‘networking’ option in the API. I sitll like ‘It’s Complicated’. (tags: facebook linkedin social+networks michael+arrington)
My Rank is fading quickly, almost as quickly as Technorati itself | The Marketing Technology Blog Douglas Karr...
Twitter As PR
Well, it’s not a surprise, that many people and companies have been using Twitter as more than the normal Twitter baseline to… do what exactly? What is the baseline use of Twitter, anyway?
Allen Stern seems to suggest that the give-and-take of conversation is the basic mode of Twitterizing, and that this mode can be easily coopted into broadcast:
[from When Does a Social Network...
What, More Rankings?
Arrington and Scoble are amassing lists (manually, of all things) of various blogs subscribers at Google Reader.
I am (momentarily) at 43.
Rubel points out (via Twitter) that as more stats of the old media crowd pour in, the ‘pee wee league’ bloggers will be pushed out. Steve also makes the sensible observation that the long tail will rapidly be discerned (surprise), and that it...
Kevin Burton
[from Twitter]
Any significantly advanced technology is incomprehensible to VCs.
Twitter BloggerBattle
Dave Winer states that Facebook sucks:
[from Why Facebook sucks (Scripting News)]
[…]
It’s another one of those user generated content things, only this time I’m building up an address book that I can look at, but can only do things with it that Facebook lets me do.
Why exactly do I need Facebook to get in between me and my address book?
I mean, I understand why they...
In Fashion, Blacks Need Not Apply, These Days
A sad story in the NYTimes, about the current whitenicity of runway models:
[from Runways Fade To White by Guy Trebay]
[…]
“Years ago, runways were almost dominated by black girls,” said J. Alexander, a judge on “America’s Next Top Model,” referring to the gorgeous mosaic runway shows staged by Hubert de Givenchy or Yves Saint Laurent in the 1970s. “Now some people are not interested...
links for 2007-10-14
NewTeeVee Conference lacking substance? « Scobleizer Scoble has 40 mostly reasonable (occasionally rambling) recommendations for Om Malik on the NewTeeVee conference. Maybe Scoble should do one, if Om doesn’t listen. (tags: rober scoble “om malik” newteevee events video video+podcasting)
CleverClogs: Basics of Attention Profiling through APML Marjolein Hoekstra has a...
Snap! LinkedIn is Not A Social Network?
Marshall Kirkpatrick is pulling pants down again, and after panning the LinkedIn decision to be a closed platform, he bitchslaps Dan Nye, CEO, and Facebookers, too:
[from LinkedIn Platform to Be a Closed One]
[…]
It’s Not a Social Network!
Nye also told the Times that LinkedIn doesn’t consider itself a social network, either. That’s funny, that’s what...
Calacanis on Gaming Techmeme
Jason does not equivocate: “Techmeme is brilliant,” he states.
And I agree with him. Techmeme is a great site, and the model of memetracking that Gabe Rivera has implemented has great social dynamics which yields very interesting patterns of interaction, and makes for a good reading experience.
Jason’s arguments for Techmeme, however, are a bit convoluted at times:
[from...
Facebook | Search Classmates
Facebook | Search Classmates Originally uploaded by Stowe Boyd
Those Spiking Feedburner Stas: Not A Bug After All
I don’t really grasp Activeweave Stickis, but it has become the channel through with 7500+ are accessing /Message (according to Feedburner)?
And it is the inclusion of Activeweave’s numbers in my Feedburner stats that accounts for the 6500+ jump I saw the other day (see The Tim O’Reily Effect).
I owuld love to have this explained to me.
Those Spiking Feedburner Stats: Not A Bug After...
[from a comments on post “Activeweave Stickis”]
Hi Stowe, Marc Meyer, CEO of Activeweave, here.
First, it’s really Activeweave BlogRovR, not Stickis (which is smaller), which accounts for your subscriber growth. We’re contacting feedburner now to change the product name they report.
You and I chatted awhile back and I mentioned we were adding you to our technology...
Christine Rosen on Virtual Friendships And The New...
Christine Rosen does a pretty good job of cataloging all the shadows in the brightly lit world of social networking. Her conclusion makes her case pretty well:
[from The New Atlantis - Virtual Friendship and the New Narcissism by Christine Rosen]
These virtual networks greatly expand our opportunities to meet others, but they might also result in our valuing less the capacity for genuine ...
Stanley Milgram
The social psychology of this century reveals a major lesson. Often it is not so much the kind of person a man is as the kind of situation in which he finds himself that determines how he will act.
links for 2007-10-13
The Next Social Network? It’s Web 2.0, And It Knows Where You Are The world is catching up to the promises of presence. At long last. (tags: presence web+2.0 facebook tim+oreilly chris+messina)
Silicon Alley Insider: Internet Recession Watch: Falling Ads, Taxes, Housing Uh-oh. (tags: the+quiet+crash internet+recession)
Gore Wins Nobel Prize, High Court Gives It to Bush That would...
Eric Schmidt Is Another Bozo Using "Social Graph"
[from Google Gives Some Hints About Social Network Plan - Bits - Technology - New York Times Blog by Miguel Helft]
[…]
Mr. Schmidt did say that over the next year, Google is planning to use information it has about the connections between its users, something techies call the “social graph,” to improve searches and other Google services. He said the company would like to sell...
Internet Evolution
CMP has started a new collective blog at the new Internet Evolution, and asked me to get involved along with a roster of very, very interesting people, including these folks, and a long list of others:
Craig Newmark of Craigslist.com
John Grimes, CIO, U.S. Department of Defense, and Assistant Secretary of Defense for Networks and Information Integration
Philip Rosedale, CEO, Linden Lab
Ralph...
Study Shows Making Abortion Illegal Leads To...
It comes as little surprise to hear that making a practice — in this case abortion — illegal merely drives it underground, but doesn’t end it.
[from Legal or Not, Abortion Rates Compare - New York Times by Elisabeth Rosenthal]
A comprehensive global study of abortion has concluded that abortion rates are similar in countries where it is legal and those where it is not,...
links for 2007-10-12
Facebook Reality Check: It’s not worth $100B, and it won’t crush MySpace or Google (but it does rock) Jason reins in the ballooning hyperbole about Facebook while praising it as the best SNA ever (tags: social+networks jason+calacanis facebook)
Signing Up for a Gmail Account? Consider Google Apps Premier at Digital Inspiration - Software Reviews, Internet and Technology Guide If...
Ties Coming Back As Hip?
You’ve got to be shitting me:
[from After Years of Being Out, the Necktie Is In - New York Times]
[…] in the last year or two, stylish men in their 20s and early 30s have embraced the old four-in-hand as a style statement — that is, as long as it is an optional one. Even with tie sales among older age groups uniformly down, sales to men 18 to 34 were up more than 13 percent, to ...
What's Going On At Corante?
I haven’t been very involved with Corante since my departure there in January of 2006. I know my old posts aren’t some hallowed ground, but man the weeds are really bad there now. Either take the blog down, or clean out the spam, guys.